It was a letter-writing campaign by Dutch environmentalists about the social and ecological impact of a huge gold and copper mine in Indonesia that set ABN Amro thinking about sustainability in project finance a decade ago.
The Grasberg mine, majority owned by Freeport-McMoRan, in the remote province of Papua, had long been a source of friction between the local population and its operators but when that spilled over into unrest in late 1997 it drew wider attention and prompted questions about the Dutch bank’s role in financing the project.
